Asmo
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Member Since: July 17, 2008
Last Power Points used: January 2, 2016
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Member Since: July 17, 2008
Last Power Points used: January 2, 2016
Available: now
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15 Comments
siftbotHappy anniversary! Today marks year number 14 since you first became a Sifter and the community is better for having you. Thanks for your contributions!
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bareboards2Thanks for this.
I know it isn't deliberate. That is why it is exhausting.
Yeah. I am done.
Now we are BOTH done! This is what is known as a win-win!
/shrug Just going off what you put in your replies. I'm not trying to deliberately misinterpret you. I guess you're over the conversation so I'll leave it at that.
Cheers,
Asmo
bareboards2It is exhausting to be told what I believe, when I never say any such thing.
It was beautiful here today.
/grin You wound me... =)
You have yet to prove that this phenomenon exists in significant numbers, let alone proven the theory that it is endemic. I spent some time reading up lest I speak out of my nether regions and, by and large, the studies referenced are as credible as that anti vax article in the Lancet that started that ball rolling.
Women's organisations pushing a narrative that white men are some sort of evil overlords convincing women that it's good to dress like sluts and be subordinate (subconciously of course) doesn't surprise me. It's like christians saying god exists. It's a subconcious effect that the person who has it won't acknowledge exists because they don't agree with what we think..? In another age, it would be witches being burned at the stake because the orthodoxy concluded that it was a fact that healing via herbs while eschewing formal religion meant you were possessed of dark powers.
I'll be happy to give as objective a viewing as I can to anything you'd like to put forward, but from what I've seen so far, most of the "science" is incredibly slanted towards a forgone conclusion.
And yes, I do agree with you, men are in a worse state, relative to where they live of course. There are plenty of people that have it far worse than the 10% living it up in the west. It's why people like Jordon Peterson are getting such an incredible response from a generation that is blamed for the woes of women in the world for the crime of having a penis. It's not just the pressure of being told to "be a man" by other men, it's the sheer stress of having the biology of a dominant hunter/gatherer/protector in a society that has declared those traits as toxic.
My son at 5 years old once burst in to tears when he came running to me after his older female cousin had punched him the chest. When I asked if it was because he was hurt, he instead said he was confused. We had told him that he could stick up for himself if anyone hit him, but we also told him to never hit girls or women... The cousin even went so far to taunt him that he couldn't hit girls and if he did, he'd get punished. It's already in the schools by the time they are 7. Privilege instruction...
Incidentally, there is some evidence that men die earlier than women because testosterone actually kills us sooner. The hypothesis being, and supported by a few early studies, that our biology gears us for action, maintaining reproduction etc in the now at the expense of longevity.
Anyhoo, enough of that, glad you had fun. And yeah, good gear makes things much better. Spent a lot of time hiking in NZ and PNG when I was younger and life was eminently more bearable with solid gear.
bareboards2Hard to have a discussion when the basic psychological concept that is endemic in society is not understood by one side of the conversation. Not really worth trying to dig out of that hole, in my opinion.
I do like your idealist view of how people SHOULD be. We aren't that way, of course. I wish it for all our futures.
Including men, and the internalized messages they get that warp their view of the world.
I have contended for years that men are in a much worse psychological state than women. We at least are encouraged to delve into our emotions, with varying degrees of success. Poor men are told to buck up and be "men". What a horrible thing to say to a little boy, or a preteen, or a teenager, or a young man entering adulthood, or a grown man dealing with a difficult world. No wonder men die earlier than women. The pressures they are under are enormous, with no way to relieve that pressure.
Generally speaking. There is a movement that has been gathering steam that is encouraging men to become more fully themselves.
The hike was great, albeit too short. We don't have great big waterfalls here on the Olympic Peninsula. It has been raining a lot lately. The waterfall that we visited was THUNDERING. I have never seen a thundering waterfall here.
Then again, I don't normally hike in the winter.
As for the weather... some Norwegian told a friend of mine -- There is no bad weather. Only bad clothing.
My clothing was fine, aided by the fact it started raining after we headed back home.
I don't doubt there are some people who exhibit an absolute psychological subversion to an ideology or person that is detrimental to their general good, ie. Stockholm syndrome, but to conclude that this is representative of even a significant minority of people who eschew victimhood in favour of responsibility for ones own situation is a long bow to draw. This is in the context of the last 20 years. Going back further to the time pre the women's rights movement or the abolishment of segregation, there are more empirical examples of internalisation.
Internalised whatever is a diminished capacity argument, limiting or removing entirely responsibility for ones actions and placing the blame elsewhere. An argument I find holds water if you're talking about blacks under Jim Crow where it would have been more desirable to either be white, or be closer to white, to escape oppression. Essentially a hostage situation.
It's a concept that loses steam as society becomes more accepting over time. Women now have the might of legislation + a significant chunk of the media behind them. They no longer have to be willing victims (although as #metoo showed, many were willing to be victims or at least silent via payout/nda when it served their purposes). If a woman is an equal to man, she must have the right to make her own decisions and the responsibility to be held accountable for them.
Hope the hike goes well. I imagine it's pretty chilly this time of year?
bareboards2You may not buy the concept of internalized sexism, racism and homophobia. Doesn't make it any less true. Mental health professionals who have studied the human condition as it exists, rather than how we want it to be, have helped identify the phenomena.
And yeah. I call it "dueling monologues." It is tiresome, isn't it?
Thanks for engaging with me.
I'm off on a tiny hike today. Apparently with all the rain we have been getting, the waterfall near Brinnon WA is a gorgeous torrent of water. And someone else is driving, so that is good!
I don't buy the whole internalised bit. That is a very easy way to remove someone's agency and blame wrongthink on something other than a person making a conscious choice that denies a promoted narrative (ie. blaming white, straight men...). It makes them a victim rather than a willful participant and more importantly, it explains away people who don't buy in to the narrative. They aren't sensible people making their own choices and highlighting that the narrative has huge gaping holes in it, they are unwitting dupes.
Viva liberation!
ps. I didn't say there was no where to go, but too often these sift debates turn in to pointless slanging of the same points over and over. Often beginning with a clinical dissection of a post to find every last bit of wrong in it. I just don't have the enthusiasm for raw combative debate (well, not as much anyway) anymore. It is not a mark of disrespect towards you who I have generally found to be a decent conversationalist, but my days of spending 4-6 hours a night banging out thousands of words on different forums are well and truly behind me.
bareboards2I do apologize for being harsh in my response. It is years of frustration.
Sexism isn't desire. Desire is lovely. Desire is mutual.
Sexism isn't mutual.
And there is internalized sexism for women just as there is internalized racism and homophobia by black and gay people. If you are steeped in a culture that lives in its lizard brain responses, one gets polluted by it. No one is free from it.
And you are correct. There is no where to go from here.
My brief reply wasn't a dismissal of your points, I just have a different subjective opinion and didn't feel it was necessary to say "sure" to a dozen individual paragraphs or start a drawn out dissection of all the little bits that I don't necessarily agree with.
And given that you've slipped back in to condescension, assertion based on opinion and an unwillingness to recognise that women have agency and choice and are making decisions as to where they work, how they dress etc, I honestly don't think it's productive to keep batting backward and forward when, in all probability, I'm just going to end up saying something that dreadfully offends you.
However, racism and desire are nothing alike. Desire is generally positive, racism isn't. Desire can be controlled, but racism can be deleted (there are plenty of former racists who have gotten over it). We can see difference, but we can also make the choice to say it doesn't matter. Desire can lead to some of the most wonderful moments of your life. Racism leads to nowhere good.
That you see the two as equivalent is disturbing.
newtboynevermind
There is plenty of employment law that says that there is an objective correct answer.
It is very frustrating to get into the conversation over and over again, meet the intellectual points with reason, and be dismissed.
Until men -- and they are mostly men -- step up to the plate and acknowledge that their biological responses are a problem that relegate women to pieces of meat for their pleasure, this will never be addressed in a way that lets us move forward.
It is akin to racism. I'm a racist. I have racist responses that are a combination of what I was brought up with (thanks, dad) and are part and parcel of how human's brains evolved.
We evolved to quickly see difference.
Helped us survive, that lightning quick assessment.
But racism is purely BELIEVING that lizard brain reaction is based in something real and should be given precedence over the frontal cortex.
Racism and sexism are related. They put lizard brain over the frontal cortex.
Just because you feel it doesn't mean it should be indulged.
And there is plenty of equal opportunity laws on the books to say that subjective racist responses, while endemic in humanity, shall not be allowed in a modern society.
We are struggling as humans to rise above the muck of biology. Wanna join me?
bareboards2There is plenty of employment law that says that there is an objective correct answer.
It is very frustrating to get into the conversation over and over again, meet the intellectual points with reason, and be dismissed.
Until men -- and they are mostly men -- step up to the plate and acknowledge that their biological responses are a problem that relegate women to pieces of meat for their pleasure, this will never be addressed in a way that lets us move forward.
It is akin to racism. I'm a racist. I have racist responses that are a combination of what I was brought up with (thanks, dad) and are part and parcel of how human's brains evolved.
We evolved to quickly see difference.
Helped us survive, that lightning quick assessment.
But racism is purely BELIEVING that lizard brain reaction is based in something real and should be given precedence over the frontal cortex.
Racism and sexism are related. They put lizard brain over the frontal cortex.
Just because you feel it doesn't mean it should be indulged.
And there is plenty of equal opportunity laws on the books to say that subjective racist responses, while endemic in humanity, shall not be allowed in a modern society.
We are struggling as humans to rise above the muck of biology. Wanna join me?
Yeah, fair points and completely subjective, I'm pretty sure there's no right objective answer here ; )
bareboards2I just now saw this. My yahoo email account sometimes disappears things on me. I lost another email about the same time.
I absolutely agree with everything you say. Biology is biology. There are differences. Sex is in the workplace, of course, and women bring it there.
I can agree with all these things, and still be creeped out by the indulgence, the wallowing, of only hiring very attractive women.
There is a long history of that in America, and it was creepy then, too. Stewardesses and what they were subjected to in the workplace is a great example. They would lose their -- THEIR WORK -- if they gained five pounds, is an example of really inappropriate use of a woman's appearance as a job qualification. These people are responsible for the safety of the passengers if a tragedy strikes. I love reading stories about how women are heroes and professional when an accident happens.
A shooting range is not a strip club. Wanting to be surrounded by women in your business who COULD work in a strip club is creepy.
Creepy really isn't the right word. It is shorthand for a complex interplay of gender roles and abuses and complicity that is endemic in our culture. I just like the way it feels in my mouth -- I found that Japanese word for it that perfectly explains my pleasure in using it. I am still pleased to know that word exists.
Gitaigo: Onomatopoeia that describes states of being, not sounds.
Creepy perfectly feels like my state of being around this video.
We are all biological beings who like to look at pretty people. Tall men make more money. Attractive people of both genders make more money. We will never be free from those responses.
But lets keep it unconscious, shall we? Let us work to be better human beings than people who reduce ourselves to walking genitalia looking for constant stimulation.
The rest of your points... yeah. I'm right with you. I am not someone who criticizes men for "looking." I find myself looking and I'm pretty firmly on the hetero side of things.
It came up the other day on a hike through the woods. A woman passed me wearing some sort of body hugging stretch pants. There was natural jiggling from her movements, which caught my eye. I found myself staring, I became aware of how perfectly proportioned she was, and how the rest of her was lovely in every aspect (I had seen her a few moments before, walking in a different direction.) I almost called out to my friends -- my god, that is the most beautiful woman. All triggered by a chance glance at an objectively beautiful rear-end.
Biology. It happens. I have no problem with it.
And those shooting range owners want to stimulate that reaction in the workplace, 100% of the time. And that, my friend, is creepy.
I was responding to your comments, as I understood them, and if I got the wrong impression, I apologise. But I think it's somewhat blinkered to say that it's men that bring sex in to the workplace. eg. Most of the young ladies that work in the same building as me wear short skirts or tight pants, lots of decolletage on display etc. That is absolutely their right as long as they meet the dress code of their employer, but it certainly brings sex appeal firmly in to the limelight.
Unfortunately, while men are seen as rather simple creatures biologically when it comes to sex, there is more than meets the eye. The science certainly isn't conclusive, but there is a lot of evidence pointing to desire being a function of the amygdala, which is strongly stimulated by visuals in men. The following article is a pop news summary of a longer (and fairly dry) study which I couldn't find an non-subscription version of, which compares brain activity in response to viewing porn images for both men and women.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/16/health/in-sex-brain-studies-show-la-difference-still-holds.html
Women still get aroused by the images, but the desire that is evoked in the male amygdala is not replicated in the female. Hence men tend to respond far better to objectification than women do. There are other results with further delve the difference between male and female sexuality, and it's not surprising that society as a whole has been molded by our biology.
Probably also explains, at least somewhat, why men (myself included) find it hard to accept criticism for something that comes naturally to most of us. Few men would go to a public place with the express purpose of leering at attractive women, but almost all men (at least the straight ones) will find themselves gazing for longer than perhaps polite at certain women that catch our eye. That is not to take away from the fact that we are generally in charge of our actions, but it certainly adds an imperative that is less about being creepy and more about our biology.
bareboards2I didn't express disapproval of the demand for sex work.
I am creeped out by men who bring sex into the workplace.
I am a huge fan of Dan Savage. He is a deeply moral man who is helping people become more fully themselves. That includes sexual expression in the privacy of the home or other agreed upon public spaces, while respecting the agreements made consensually between adults.
I also didn't say anything about the women being forced to look the way they do. It is their free choice to sell barter themselves on their sexual attributes in an arena that has nothing to do with sex -- a shooting range.
And I think it is creepy that men want this. To bring sex out of the dating world. Out of strip clubs. Out of sex clubs. And into a mundane world of a shooting range. It has implications about the treatment of women, the objectification of women, that creep me out. The blindness of it creeps me out.
Anyway.
Glad to know you weren't talking about me. Because I don't recognize myself in the way you talk about the conversation I have been engaged in. Sooo many times I say -- I didn't say this. I didn't say that.
It does get frustrating having a conversation on the Sift (not just you) where my words get twisted and embroidered.
And I love it when someone says something that shows I am incorrect or have stated something that doesn't clearly communicate my point of view. It helps me understand the world a little bit more, helps me see my own bias, and teaches me to communicate better. (Like blaming Keanu -- that was a huge mistake.)
Thanks for engaging with me. I appreciate you taking the time.
It's an inference based on the fact that I don't see slave chains on any of the employees... No one forced these women to take these jobs and while they are certainly attractive, I doubt many people go to a shooting range for the express purpose of eyeballing the staff. Strip clubs are much cheaper imo.
= \
And while your entitled to not approve of the demand for sex work, you'll be pleased to know that sexual liberation (that funny thing feminists got the ball rolling on) is paying dividends for women using men.
http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life-and-relationships/sex-and-relationships/the-women-who-hire-male-escorts-20140203-31wtv.html
General stats are that women and couples are using male sex workers a lot more now and more power to em if that's their thing. Objectification cuts both ways. Back when I was dating, it was refreshing to not meet a women who didn't objectify my wallet...
Which is neither here nor there in regards to the ladies at the gun range. There are no facts in evidence that they are forced to look the way they do.
bareboards2Is this directed at my point of view, asmo?
If it is, I don't recognize myself in it.
My criticisms were all pointed at men choosing ONLY facade.
I never said the women shouldn't wear makeup. I didn't talk about their intelligence or their skills with guns -- I have no idea how intelligent or skilled these women are.
My being creeped out was related to whoever assembled a statistically impossible collection of beautiful women, and then using a camera to give them prominence in a video purported about Keanu's shooting skills.
I admitted my error at assuming that Keanu was the person who gathered these women in one spot.
Certainly, I am guilty of being unhappy that women allow themselves to be used this way. But I didn't say that out loud. They are responding to the market, and there is indeed a market for beautiful facades.
I have no problem with sex workers (if they are protected from human trafficking and enslavement.) These women, whatever their other skills, are sex workers.
I do have a problem with men who surround themselves with ONLY sex workers.
Feminism. Empowering women to be whatever they want then condemning them for not making approved choices.
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